- America is experiencing its biggest prescription drug price deflation in generations.
- The good news: New CMS guidance requires Medicaid and CHIP, Medicare Advantage and exchange insurers to post certain metrics, such as a list of all services requiring prior authorization, to the plans’ public-facing websites in an easily accessible location.
- The bad news: More needs to be done.
- Two approaches to fixing Medicaid.
- Why have prescription drug prices seen the biggest drop in 60 years?
- LLMs size you up. If it thinks you are low socioeconomic status and you ask about travel options, it may filter out more expensive flights – without you asking it!
Category: Health Insurance
Wednesday Links – 19 August 2026
- Medicare Advantage plans give enrollees an average of $2,660 per member for benefits not available from traditional Medicare.
- Study: Nearly one-third of all women ages 20 to 44 will have heart disease in 2050, up from one-fourth today.
- Study: More than half of patients with metastatic lung cancer don’t receive life-extending treatments.
- A 2012 randomized controlled trial sponsored by the federal government found that children assigned to Head Start showed transient improvements in language and literacy during preschool. But “these early effects rapidly dissipated in elementary school,” the study found, and participants performed no better academically by third grade.
- The French lilac, a garden plant that was used to treat diabetes for centuries became the blueprint for metformin.
GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs Are Truly Wonder Drugs
The new class of weight loss drugs, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1), were originally developed to treat diabetes. Along the way something curious began to happen. People lost weight and lost their desire to gorge on food.
Saturday Links – 15 August 2026
- AI is beating human doctors in medical tests.
- Caffeine at 5 pm; sleep by 10 pm.
- Immigration is a problem all over the world.
- Yglesias: good comparison of Medicare in Canada vs. Medicare in Australia.
- Burritos actually haven’t gotten more expensive.
- Surveys: men are not lonelier than women. (Slate)
- Why obtaining more health data on otherwise healthy people can be harmful. (NYT)
- “Moving from the highest tax stats – California and New York – with income tax rates as high as 14% – to a no-income tax state like Florida, Tennessee or Texas, a family with $5 million or more in income can increase annual take-home pay by 30%.”